ST JOHN’S, Antigua (CMC) — A High Court judge has sentenced a 70-year-old grandmother to 25 years in jail after she was found guilty of manslaughter in the death of her 18-year-old granddaughter in 2014.

In passing sentence on Millicent Cornwall-Roberts on Friday, Justice Keith Thom said that the evidence during the trial showed a heinous offence had been committed.

Cornwall-Roberts was found guilty of manslaughter in July this year after a week-and-a-half trial during which she turned down her lawyer’s recommendation to plead guilty to manslaughter in the death of her granddaughter, Jael Thomas.

During the trial the court heard that the teenager had been beaten severely by the accused with a stick during the early hours of September 22, 2014, and did not stop even after a neighbour tried to intervene.

The court was told that Cornwall-Roberts ignored the neighbour and dragged Thomas into the house where she continued beating her about the body.

When the teenager, who as a result of the beating could not walk, asked for water to drink, Cornwall-Roberts refused to get it and instead made the girl crawl from her room to the refrigerator to get the water, even though she was bleeding badly from a puncture wound on her foot.

The judge said that it was particularly troubling that the convicted grandmother, who celebrated her birthday on the day of the killing, and who had some medical training as a nursing aid, allowed the teen to bleed to death at her home.